Institutional Tips

Reporting on your web accessibility findings: It can be easy using the GOALS tool

Added July 25, 2013: Producing formal reports on institutional accessibility are important to document efforts, progress, and recommendations. However, it can be a labor intensive process. The GOALS Benchmarking and Planning Tool include a feature to help users create a formal report in an efficient way.

Budgeting for Your Web Accessibility Plans

Added May 29, 2013: Let's face it, if you are part of a web accessibility committee on your campus, you need to advocate for a sufficient budget so your plans will succeed. Initiatives valued by the institution are funded. Those relegated to volunteer efforts are doomed for failure, or at least a short lifespan. There is nothing worse than putting in grueling hours to create an elegant web accessibility plan only to find out that there is no mechanism to fund the effort.

Writing a solid web accessibility policy: Cornell gets it right

Added February 26, 2013:One of the most common requests we get from the field is for information and resources on policy creation. Most often, people want to see samples of what this looks like in higher education. Of course it is because people benefit from models they can look to, as they create their own.

Voices from the Field: Purdue University Calumet

Added January 29, 2013: We hope to run this feature on a regular basis but of course we must rely on contributors. We strongly encourage others to share practices in place at their institution. We all benefit by sharing both the successes and challenges of accessibility practices that have been established or changed. Please consider how your experiences could help others.

Providing training for faculty and staff: An essential element for your campus

Added January 28, 2013: Many of our readers are already sold on the importance of web accessibility and the need to ensure that the broader institutional web is accessible to all. Many readers are also engaged as their institution creates policies and implementation plans, some even work with the procurement office on procedures, and provide training and support to institutional web developers and other technical personnel. However, fewer have embarked on the challenging journey of getting mainline faculty and staff equipped with the knowledge and skills to do their share for accessibility.

Assessing your Institution's Web Accessibility Efforts: Part 2

Added October 16, 2012: Evaluating web content for accessibility requires an evaluation of both the process (your institutional work on web accessibility) and product (the accessibility of your web content). This resource outlines how to prepare for and conduct an evaluation of your institution's web content. While it may be tempting to jump straight into an evaluation, following these steps can help make your accessibility reporting process more effective.

Assessing your Institution's Web Accessibility Efforts: Part 1

Added October 15, 2012: Anyone who has ever been involved in system-wide change at a postsecondary institution is keenly aware that change takes time. In the case of web accessibility, we have learned that the period of this change can be 4 or more years (e.g., the Cal State System initially created a 4 year timeline to drive their transformation and then extended it). Because of lengthy timelines, it is vital that institutions include periodic assessments of their process. By process, we mean the efforts you make to achieve the goals and objectives, or milestones and activities, you have targeted as a way to improve accessibility. The assessment of your process should be done alongside assessments of the outcome, or product, of accessible web content (i.e., how many of our pages or courses are now accessible).

The Institution's Web Accessibility Study Team

Added August 1, 2012: We often get the question, “who should participate in our institution's self-study team or task force committee on web accessibility?” This resource sheet is intended to walk you through the logic for selecting the most representative committee, to help you begin to identify the best individuals, and then provide some strategies to enlist and sustain their participation.